I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I

Warrior II x3
Light Armor Maintenance Bot II x3

At the time I joined Rote Kapelle two or so years ago, "cop car" fleets were wildly popular in the alliance for small roaming gangs. They got their name from a previous skin for the Federation Navy Comet, which had a flashing police light on top and police-like markings on the side. You'd jump into a mining system (say) and tackle a mining barge while typing "Pull over!" and "Do you know how fast you were going, son?" and "You're under arrest!" and such things into Local. Cheerful fun was had.

But not long after I joined Rote, the Comet received its V3 skin along with the other faction frigates. The cop car went from distinctive police coloring to Gallente green and brown space camo. The flashing light was replaced with a space headlight. To add insult to injury, the Gallente themselves were allowed to keep the police markings for their NPC customs ships. Complaints were met with a super-lame excuse that capsuleers shouldn't be flying around in police-marked ships. And much of value was lost. Of course, the ship itself is still terrific and it's still fun to fly, but it just doesn't have the same personality these days, you know? ;-)

Anyway, the Comet really wants to be a Taranis so start from the same sort of notion: mid-range small blasters and double MFS, along with three drones, pumps out 250 DPS before heat which is pretty damn nice for a frigate platform. You can double up on DPS drones if you like but this ship is so fast and efficient I actually prefer to loot combat drones from the corpses of my victims as I lose my own. I therefore carry a set of armor rep drones or ECM drones instead as the second trio, depending on if the fleet is going to have logi frigates along or not.

Logi is kinda superfluous honestly and the two acknowledgements that a ship should have a tank are a DC and an ancillary armor rep. Overheat the latter right out of the gate and it will mitigate some of the DPS that's hitting you. If you have a small- to medium fleet along, your fellow cop cars will wipe out the target before you die.

The ship is dual-propped and relies heavily on speed and small sig to also mitigate a good bit of damage. You'll be going in tight at scram range and your standard speed will approach 4000m/s, 5500 with heat! That will (a) tackle just about anything, and (b) outrun all but the very fastest drone damage. Once you're in close, switch over to an afterburner to continue mitigating damage. A swarm of cop cars flown correctly can also mitigate their damage using wolf-pack tactics: if you're the enemy's primary, feel free to switch back to MWD, spiral away from the enemy fleet, and avoid damage through high speed, high transversal, and mobility until the enemy switches targets. Meanwhile, you'll still be doing at least some damage thanks to your drones. When the enemy switches targets, you can swoop back in (hopefully your AAR will have had time to heal your wounds) and put your blasters back on target while the new primary swoops out of range.

It's a very entertaining, engaging, and fun way to play EVE Online and done correctly will frustrate an enemy no end. That said, you are quite vulnerable to light missile ships, so watch out for Crows, Maledictions, Heretics, Flycatchers, Coraxes, and Talwars, as well as the occasional RLML Caracal and Bellicose. Many of these ships can and will scram you back if you get too close and can pelt you down at ranges approaching 60km which is better than all but the very best drone control range. But against gun-based ships you'll have more luck. If facing a scram-fit LML ship, try using your AB overheated to break tackle and gain some distance to put your MWD back into operation.

The NOS is provided to both keep your tackle working and to provide supplemental cap to your AAR. Particularly confident pilots will replace the meta MWD with a low-end deadspace version. This will reduce the capacitor penalty of the MWD which hits this ship particularly hard. Comets are a bit under-powered in terms of starting cap. Finally, your rigs promote speed- and sig-tanking. Again, confident pilots will replace the Polycarbon rig with the T2 version. This does very nice things to both your top speed and your agility for keeping a tight orbit. If you find yourself overshooting targets, you can replace the Aux Thrusters right with an explosive resist rig for armor but keep in mind this will slow you down twice over.

Overheat everything on this ship, and do it often. Carry lots and lots of paste! In addition, X-Instinct booster or Mindflood booster will help, depending on how much you rely on cap, and Drop booster of some kind is a must.

Comets are a very entertaining small- to mid-size gang fleet meta, best flown with an adult beverage or two close at hand to maximize their enjoyment. So few fleet metas in this game engage you like a ball of angry frigates...

PULL OVER!

All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only. You
may not have the skills needed for this exact fit. If you do not, feel
free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta
3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war. Ships can also be adjusted
to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the
pilot flying it. Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce
you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type
of ship more aggressively and well.

2 comments:

Gotta say it, spaceship camo in general is one of the most retarded ideas the art department ever managed to come up with. Wanna know how real spaceship camo would look like? Yeah, total black. Space != jungle environment.

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